The Appropriation of Media in Everyday Life

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series #224

by Ruth Ayaß (Editor), Cornelia Gerhardt (Editor)

This volume contributes to the burgeoning field of interactional linguistic media studies. It focuses on how people appropriate media in their daily lives. Thus here it is not the talk in the medium itself, but naturally occurring interactions in different media reception situations that are analysed. The idea that media function like a hypodermic needle injecting messages into the masses has long been questioned. Still, the actual moment when people use media in their daily lives has largely been ignored in media studies. This book analyses the minutiae of the moment when people actively appropriate media for their own purposes in different fashions. The reception communities analysed include families watching television, girls gossiping about a talent show, teenagers playing video games, a team of fire-men implementing a new medium in their workplace, radio listeners´ phone ins and others. The languages studied comprise English, German, French, Swedish and Finnish.

316 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2012